The story of Homo neanderthalis began with
a chance discovery. In 1848, a strange skull was discovered on the
British military outpost of Gibraltar. When it was first revealed,
it confounded everyone who saw it. There was no doubt it was human,
but it also had the heavy features of an ape. Soon, remains of the
savages were being found all over Europe. From the Atlantic coast
almost to the foothills of the Himalayas and south into the Middle
East. They were everywhere.

Homo neanderthalis - commonly known as
Neanderthals - lived during one of the toughest periods in human
history: the most recent ice age. During this time the climate of
Europe varied enormously, but it was characterised by periods of
intense cold. At its worst, most of Britain was blanketed by polar
ice which was over a mile thick. For hundreds of miles to the south
there was nothing but desolate wasteland. Life in the north would
have been impossible. But it seems that further south, where the
frozen tundra began to melt, Neanderthals could survive, living
on the fringes of broken woodland. To exist for so long in such
harsh conditions most scientists believe that Neanderthals must
have been biologically adapted to the cold.

There were, however, slightly warmer periods
further north, and early Neanderthal remains dating from 400,000
BC have been found at Boxgrove in Sussex, southern England.

Evolved from Homo heidelbergensis, the
Neanderthal brain size was twelve percent larger than that of
modern humans and they relied on a heavy meat diet. They were
as formidable as the ice age environment in which they lived.
Their short, squat physique was an ideal body shape for conserving
heat - they usually reached no more than 1.7 metres tall (five
and-a-half feet). But despite their small stature, they had big,
powerful muscles - a sign of the demanding lifestyle they led.
They looked out at their harsh world from under a bony ridge
that arched across their foreheads.

Set in the middle of their long faces was a
long projecting nose which distanced the delicate tissues of
the brain from the frozen ice age air. They were skilled hunters,
cooperating together in hunting parties. Neanderthals exploited
the natural landscape to surround their quarry and make their
kills at close range. This hunting practice left many
Neanderthals with painful injuries, but they could often simply
shrug off the more minor of them.

They were also the hunters who spoke...

Primate evolution tree showing the main groups (click on image
to view full sized)

Social relations were important to the Neanderthals,
and these were maintained through language. The cerebral symmetry
of a Neanderthal brain was the same as any modern human being
would show, with no difference in the shape of the frontal lobe.
So the prefrontal portions that are supposed to deal with very
complex cognitive functioning are about identical between
Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens.

The Neanderthal hyoid bone, which holds the
voicebox in place, shows they were capable of complex speech.
But their sentences were probably basic, and loud. Their larger
chest cavities would have supplied much more force to their speech
than Homo sapiens could later manage. Professor Stanley
Ambrose of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is of
the opinion that they spoke a good deal in the imperative: 'Give
me the object' rather than 'Could you perhaps give me the object?'
as modern humans might say.

These cave-dwellers even cared for the elderly
and infirm (Homo georgicus has been found to have done
the same). An elderly male Neanderthal known as 'La-Chapelle-aux-Saints
1' had lost all his molar teeth, making it impossible for him to
chew his food. But the bone above his tooth cavities had partially
healed, suggesting that other Neanderthals chewed his food for him
before feeding it to him.

Neanderthal home ranges were extremely small. Their
tools are rarely found more than 50km (30 miles) from their source.
Early modern humans maintained social networks over distances of
up to 200km (124 miles).

The archaeological record suggests that Neanderthals
hunted on the edges of forests, preying on large animals, like red
deer. A group of Neanderthals needed to kill one of these every two
days to survive. To hunt effectively they needed weapons, and they
left behind a wealth of well crafted stone spearheads.

Ice age Europe's changing environments - this map depicts Europe
when the ice sheets were not at their fullest extent, but when
conditions were colder than those of the present day (click on
map to view full sized, and with more information)

195,000

Homo sapiens (rhodesiensis) (archaic humans)Part 1 of 3

A skull was discovered by a labourer in 1921 at
Broken Hill in Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe in Zambia). It was
initially named Homo rhodesiensis ('Rhodesian man'). It is
now commonly referred to as the Broken Hill Skull or the Kabwe
Cranium.

This was in fact a sample of what was commonly
referred to as the group Homo sapiens (archaic). It was
a complete cranium that was very robust, with large brow ridges
and a receding forehead, similar to Homo neanderthalis,
but with a cranium intermediate between advanced Homo sapiens
and neanderthalis. Most current experts believe
rhodesiensis to be within the group of Homo
heidelbergensis though other designations such as archaic
Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens rhodesiensis have also
been proposed. Its estimated age is between 200,000 and 125,000
years. The brain size was about 1280cc.

It seems likely now that this was either an example
of late heidelbergensis or an intermediate stage between
heidelbergensis and Homo sapiens.

Incredibly, it seems that there may have been
several sub-groups or variations of Homo sapiens around
at this time, as a new study proved at the site at which two
partial skulls were found in 1967. This new study pushed back to
195,000 years ago the date for the first appearance of
anatomically modern humans.

The remains, classified as Omo I, were found
alongside remains of a slightly more primitive version, called
Omo II, confirming the existence of contemporary populations which
were anatomically different but which could still be broadly
categorised as archaic human.

Homo sapiens idaltu appeared by this time,
if not earlier (idaltu means 'elder' in the Afar language of the
Herto region). Critically, three skulls discovered in Herto, in the
Afar region of eastern Ethiopia initially showed that this subspecies
bridged the gap between Homo heidelbergensis in Africa and
the fully modern humans which spread out into the Middle East up to
100,000 years ago. The skulls are not an exact match to those of
people living today; they are slightly larger, longer and have more
pronounced brow ridges.

All the skulls had cut marks indicating they had been
de-fleshed in some kind of mortuary practice. The polishing on the skulls,
however, suggests that this was not simple cannibalism but more probably
some kind of ritualistic behaviour. This type of practice has been recorded
in more modern societies, including some in New Guinea, in which the skulls
of ancestors are preserved and worshipped. The Herto skulls may have marked
the earliest known example of conceptual thinking - the sophisticated
behaviour that sets humans apart from all other animals.

The conclusion of the discoverers was that the Herto
skulls 'sample a population that is on the verge of anatomical modernity
but [is] not yet fully modern'. They therefore assigned it to a new
subspecies called idaltu, 'because the Herto hominids are morphologically
just beyond the range of variation seen in AMHS [anatomically modern
Homo sapiens], and because they differ from all other known fossil
hominids, we recognise them here as Homo sapiens idaltu, a new
palaeosubspecies of Homo sapiens'.

Both anatomically and chronologically, the Herto skulls
seem intermediate between earlier and more primitive skulls such as Bodo
(Homo heidelbergensis, dated around 600,000 years ago) and Homo
rhodesiensis, and the first completely modern human skulls.

It was originally though that this transitional species
was to disappear within 10,000 years as full-blown Homo sapiens
emerged in Africa, but it is known known that Homo sapiens
appeared much earlier, by 195,000, so Homo sapiens idaltu must
have been one of several contemporary variations which existed for a
time.